Understanding money and its use: The functional and structural reasons behind the use of money

• Autor(a) principal: Azevedo, Pedro Henrique Pinto
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/11686
• topic: Money creation; Sistema monetário internacional -- International monetary system; Commercial bank; Money functions; Criação de dinheiro; Sistema monetário; Banco comercial; Funções monetárias

The objective of the current essay is to understand the functional and structural reasons behind people’s use of money. Within this perspective, it explores the origins of money, the evolution of its concept and functionalities since early civilizations, its role within society, and lastly how is it created and controlled and the consequences of the current monetary system to the modern society. This research explains how people use money not only as a consequence of the historical functionalities that it has been fulfilling, but also as consequence of the current structure of the financial and monetary system that generates a dependency and addiction of the modern economy and its populations on this resource. A collateral conclusion of the current essay is the privileged position that commercial banks face in the modern economic system, that not only benefit from a constant transfer of wealth and accumulation of purchasing power from the rest of the economy to the banking sector, but also gives commercial banks a tremendous power to influence and shape most economy. The understanding of the concepts and research explored within the current essay, is fundamental to comprehend and properly lead with the root causes of some of the biggest problems of modern civilizations.